Episodes

Professor Chris Rapley CBE is Professor of Climate Science at University College London’s Department of Earth Sciences. He served previously as Director of the British Antarctic Survey and of the Science Museum, and is a passionate and plain-speaking advocate for Climate Science. Professor Rapley is a Fellow of UCL and of St Edmund's College, Cambridge, a member of the Academia Europaea, Chair of the European Science Foundation’s European Space Sciences Committee, Member of the Advisory Board of the UK government’s Clean Growth Fund, Patron of the Surrey Climate Commission, a member of the Science Advisory board of Scientists’ Warning, and a member of the UK Parliamentary and Scientific Committee. His previous posts include Directorships of the Science Museum and British Antarctic Survey, Chair of the London Climate Change Partnership, President of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, Executive Director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, and founder…

Jonathon Porritt has been on the front line of environmental campaigning for more than 45 years. He has worked tirelessly to promote the solutions to today’s converging environmental crises – including as Director of Friends of the Earth (1980s), co-chair of the Green Party (1980-83), of which he is still a member, Trustee of WWF-UK (1991-2005), Chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission (2000-2009), and Chancellor of Keele University (2012-2022). Jonathon is Co-Founder of Forum for the Future – the UK’s leading sustainable development charity – and President of Population Matters and The Conservation Volunteers. His work as author, broadcaster and commentator on sustainable development has had a huge impact over the years, and he is involved in the work of many NGOs, charities and campaigning organizations as Patron, Chair or Special Advisor.  His latest book, ‘Hope in Hell’, a powerful call to action on climate change, was published in June 2020. His other recent book…

Dr. Jennifer Holmgren is CEO of carbon recycling company, LanzaTech. Prior to joining LanzaTech, Dr. Holmgren was VP and General Manager of the Renewable Energy and Chemicals business unit at UOP LLC, a Honeywell Company. Dr. Holmgren is the author or co-author of 50 US patents and more than 30 scientific publications. In 2003, she was the first woman awarded the Malcolm E. Pruitt Award from the Council for Chemical Research (CCR). In 2010, she was the recipient of the Leadership Award from the Civil Aviation Alternative Fuels Initiative (CAAFI) for her work in establishing the technical and commercial viability of sustainable aviation biofuels. In 2015 Dr. Holmgren and her team at LanzaTech were awarded the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Presidential Green Chemistry Award and she was awarded the BIO Rosalind Franklin Award for Leadership in Industrial Biotechnology. Sustainability magazine, Salt, named Dr. Holmgren as the world’s most compassionate business woman in 2015. In …

Dev Sanyal is Chief Executive Officer of VARO Energy Group AG, based in Zug, Switzerland. He was appointed to this role effective 1 January 2022. Prior to this, Dev had a 32-year career with BP plc including over a decade as a member of the group executive committee and headed gas and low carbon energy globally. Prior to this, he was chief executive, alternative energy and also accountable for BP’s Europe and Asia regions. During his tenure, he built world scale businesses in sustainable energy – solar, offshore wind, onshore wind, hydrogen and gas and power - and led the pivot in the company’s energy transition strategy. Dev joined BP in 1989 and held a variety of international roles in London, Athens, Istanbul, Vienna and Dubai. Prior to joining the Group Executive Committee, he held the roles of group treasurer and chairman of BP Investment Management and Arco Aluminium, chief executive, Air BP International and chief executive, BP Eastern Mediterranean. Dev is an indep…

Bill McKibben is founder of Third Act, which organizes people over the age of 60 for action on climate and justice. His 1989 book The End of Nature is regarded as the first book for a general audience about climate change, and has appeared in 24 languages. He’s gone on to write 20 books, and his work appears regularly in periodicals from the New Yorker to Rolling Stone. He serves as the Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College, as a fellow of the American ...

Dr. Julio Friedmann is Chief Scientist and Chief Carbon Wrangler at Carbon Direct. He recently served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Fossil Energy at the Department of Energy where he was responsible for DOE’s R&D program in advanced fossil energy systems, carbon capture, and storage (CCS), CO2 utilisation, and clean coal deployment. More recently, he was a Senior Research Scholar and now a Non--Resident Fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University SIPA, where he led the Carbon Management Research Initiative. He has held positions at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, including Chief Energy Technologist, where he worked for 15 years. Dr. Friedmann is one of the most widely known and authoritative experts in the U.S. on carbon removal (CO2 drawdown from the air and oceans), CO2 conversion and use (carbon-to-value), hydrogen, industrial decarbonisation, and carbon capture and sequestration. In addition to close partne…

Aksel is one of the most successful alpine skiers in history – winning 2 Olympic golds, 5 World Championships, 36 World Cup races and two overall World Cup titles. He began his career as a serial entrepreneur and investor while still competing, and since 2015 has been part of the partner team at Norselab, where he is now Deputy Chief Investment Officer. Norselab is an Oslo-based impact investment platform in which Capricorn Investment Group’s Capricorn’s Sustainable Investment Fund owns a 20% stake.

Mindy Lubber is the CEO and President of the sustainability nonprofit organization Ceres. She leads an all-women executive leadership team and more than 160 employees working to mobilize the most influential investors and companies to solve the world’s greatest sustainability challenges. She has been at the helm since 2003, and under her leadership, the organization and its powerful networks and global collaborations have grown significantly in size and influence. Prior to Ceres, Lubber served as a Regional Administrator at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under former President Bill Clinton. She also founded Green Century Capital Management and served as the director of the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group (MASSPIRG). She has received numerous awards and recognitions for her leadership. In 2020, Lubber was awarded the United Nations ’Champions of the Earth’ Entrepreneurial Vision award. In the same year, Lubber made Barron’s Magazine’s list of the 100 mos…

Julia is currently leading the introduction of private financing into new nuclear in the UK – Sizewell C is the path finder project. This involves working cooperatively with Government, with cross party MPs, trade unions, with industry and with the financial community. Julia has lead the development of a new vision for nuclear as ‘servant of the future energy system’ – nuclear working together with renewables and contributing to both the growth of a hydrogen economy and to the development of Direct Air Capture, as well as generating electricity for the National Grid. Prior to joining EDF to develop the Sizewell C Project, Julia was Head of Power at Herbert Smith Freehills for the UK and Europe, and led a team advising on power projects of all technologies, and has worked on a range of infrastructure projects in transport and defence sectors, and in M&A. Julia led the team advising BEIS (then DTI) on the formation of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, and spent a year on secon…

Roger Pielke, Jr. has been on the faculty of the University of Colorado Boulder since 2001, where he teaches and writes on a diverse range of policy and governance issues related to science, technology, environment, innovation and sports. Roger is a professor in the Environmental Studies Program. Roger is currently focusing his research on a NSF-sponsored, 16-country evaluation of science advice in the COVID-19 pandemic. Roger holds degrees in mathematics, public policy and political science, all from the University of Colorado. In 2012 Roger was awarded an honorary doctorate from Linköping University in Sweden and was also awarded the Public Service Award of the Geological Society of America. In 2006, Roger received the Eduard Brückner Prize in Munich, Germany in 2006 for outstanding achievement in interdisciplinary climate research. Roger has been a Distinguished Fellow of the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan since 2016. From 2019 he has served as a science and economics …

Simon Morrish is the CEO and founder of Xlinks, CEO of Ground Control and Partner at Levitate Capital. Simon is a serial entrepreneur (he is the founder of amongst others, Xlinks, Future Motors and Skysports) who has invested in and worked with companies such as Excel IT, Solar Ventus, CQC, Survey Roofing and Litter Boss. Simon started out at Morgan Stanley as a Derivatives Analyst, he then worked at McKinsey & Company. With his wife, he co-founded and directed How-Smart Ltd which was successfully sold to a larger competitor. Simon holds a Master’s degree with Distinction in Economics, Engineering and Management from Oxford University and a Master of Business Administration degree with Honors from Harvard Business School. Simon was a recipient of the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year™ award for Transformational Leadership in 2018 and was the recipient of the British Business Excellence Awards LDC Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2021.

Hannah Jones is the CEO of The Earthshot Prize, a prize and a platform founded by HRH Prince William and the Royal Foundation in 2020 to search, spotlight and scale solutions that can help repair and regenerate the planet in this decade. Hannah Jones is a social and environmental advocate believing in the power of entrepreneurism, innovation and collaboration to affect systems change. She started her career in radio, at the BBC, before working as a social entrepreneur in a British Charity, founding and leading pan-European AIDS/HIV prevention and anti-racism campaigns across 100's of Radio stations. She then worked on the founding team of Microsoft’s philanthropy program in EMEA before joining Nike to help start their first Corporate Responsibility team in EMEA. For 16 years, as Nike’s first Chief Sustainability Officer, working to the CEO and the Nike Board of Directors, Hannah helped lead the transformation of Nike’s labor rights and sustainability efforts, turning both func…

Robert Llewellyn is the joint CEO of the Fully Charged Show. Robert Llewellyn is most commonly known for playing the role of Kryten for 30 years in the BBC hit series Red Dwarf. He hosted the Channel 4 series Scrapheap Challenge for 10 years, along with 8 series of How Do They Do It for Channel 5. More recently he has taken his career to YouTube with The Fully Charged Show, the series has over 870,000 subscribers and now receives an average of 4 million views a month. On the Fully Charged Show Llewellyn and his co-hosts investigate the rapid development of electric vehicle technology and anything from solar panels to alternative energy sources. He is the author of seven fiction and eight non-fiction books, Llewellyn, who is of Anglo-Welsh ancestry, learnt to drive at age 11 (having been taught by his older brother in a go-kart); formerly a "petrol-head", he is now a widely acknowledged electric car and renewable energy/clean tech advocate and frequently presents talks on …

Ion Yadigaroglu has been Managing Partner at Capricorn Investment Group since 2004, and is an early investor in iconic technology companies including Tesla, SpaceX, Planet, QuantumScape and Saildrone. Capricorn was born from the desire to demonstrate the huge investment potential that resides in breakthrough commercial solutions to the world’s most pressing problems, and as such is one of the original impact investors. Prior to Capricorn, Ion was Director of Business Development (M&A) with Koch Industries, executing a range of acquisitions and investments, and a Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Bivio, a software startup in Colorado, and an Analyst at Olsen & Associates, a quantitative forex trader. Ion was a research fellow at Columbia University and holds a master’s in physics from ETH Zürich in Switzerland and a Ph.D. in Astrophysics from Stanford University. Ion serves on the boards of Twelve and Capricorn, and was a founding member in 2007 of GIIN, the Global Impact…

Patrick Graichen is a State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action. He has held this post since 15 December 2021 and is responsible for energy and climate policy. From 2012, Graichen was instrumental in setting up the think tank Agora Energiewende, taking on the roles of Executive Director and Managing Director from 2014 until his move to the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action. He began his career in public service at the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, first as an officer in the Division for International Climate Protection, then as Personal Assistant to a State Secretary, and subsequently as Head of Division for Climate and Energy Policy. During this time, he played a leading role in negotiating the economic instruments of the Kyoto Protocol, the Federal Government's 2007 Integrated Energy and Climate Programme, the EU's 2008 Climate and Energy Package, and legislative procedures in the field of energy law.…

Francesco La Camera has been the Director-General of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) since April 2019. Under Francesco’s leadership the Agency has forged a series of new strategic partnerships with UN organisations including UNDP, UNFCCC and Green Climate Fund among others. A key priority of his tenure is to implement a more action-oriented approach to the Agency’s work. Previously, Francesco served as Director-General of Sustainable Development, Environmental Damage, EU and International Affairs at the Italian Ministry of Environment, Land & Sea since 2014. Francesco held number of roles at the Italian Ministry of Environment, Land and Sea. As the national coordinator for climate, environment, resource efficiency and circular economy, he led the Italian delegation to UNFCCC’s COP 21 to 24 and the EU Presidency at COP 20. He was responsible for the preparation and organisation of Italy’s G7 Environment Presidency in 2017. He served as co-chair of the Africa Cen…

Farhana Yamin is an international climate change lawyer, public speaker, author and social justice activist. Farhana is a Visiting Professor at the University of the Arts in London, Associate Research Fellow at Chatham House, Senior Adviser to SystemIQ and Co Coordinator of Camden Think and Do. Farhana has spent over three decades working in the climate space – she represented small island and developing countries at climate conferences (she has been deputy chair of the Expert Group of Advisors to the Climate Vulnerable Forum), worked at Children's Investment Fund Foundation, served as a special adviser to the EU Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard, founded Track 0 and taught at a number of universities. Farhana was one of the Coordinators of Extinction Rebellion’s Strategy team. Farhana read PPE at Somerville College, Oxford and is a qualified solicitor. She feature on the 2020 BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour Power list.

John joined National Grid in 1991 and during his time at the company has held a variety of senior management roles, including UK Director of Engineering in 2003, Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President for the US Electricity Distribution & Generation business in 2007, Chief Operating Officer for UK Gas Distribution in 2010, and UK Chief Operating Officer from 2012 to 2014. He joined the Board in 2014, as Executive Director UK, responsible for the UK’s Electricity Transmission, Gas Transmission and Gas Distribution businesses. In September 2017, John came together with the government and thirteen other CEOs to create an Inclusive Economy Partnership, which has been established to identify and develop solutions to some of today’s most significant societal challenges, including financial inclusion and capability, mental health and transition to work. In January 2018, John was appointed to the Rentokil Initial plc Board as a Non-Executive Director and became …

Mark Carney is one of the towering figures of climate finance. In 2020 Mark became the UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance, and the adviser to the UK on finance for COP 26. At COP26, in Glasgow, he launched GFANZ - the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, whose members manage $130 trillion of financial assets and have pledged to invest them in line with the Paris agreements. Mark co-chairs GFANZ together with Mike Bloomberg. Mark is a Vice Chair and Head of Transition Investing at Brookfield Asset Management and Board Member of Stripe. He was the governor of Bank of Canada from 2008 to 2013, and then Governor of the Bank of England from 2013 until 2020. He was the chair of the Financial Stability Board (2011-2018) founding co-chair of TCFD - the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure. Mark holds a bachelor's degree with high honours in economics from Harvard University and MPhil and DPhil in Economics from the University of Oxford.

Alex Honnold is one of the world’s best rock climbers, famous for his free solo ascents of big walls, including his 2017 first free solo of El Capitan in Yosemite. Alex began studies in engineering at the University of California-Berkeley but dropped out to pursue his passion for climbing, living out of his van. He first attracted attention within the climbing community in 2008 when he became the first climber to free solo Half Dome in Yosemite. In 2012 he established the speed record for the Yosemite Triple Crown, climbing three big walls in under 19 hours. With Hans Florine, Alex climbed the popular Nose of El Capitan, a nearly 3,000-foot granite wall, in a record time of two hours 23 minutes and 51 seconds – a feat National Geographic described as perhaps " the greatest feat of pure rock climbing in the history of the sport." Alex has been profiled by 60 minutes and the New York Times, appeared on the cover of National Geographic and starred in numerous adventure films. In 20…

Claire Skinner is a partner in Heidrick & Struggles' London office and leader of the Europe region. She is a member of the firm’s CEO & Board, Industrial, and Private Equity practices. Claire has more than 20 years of experience building executive and non-executive teams for a wide range of clients involved in energy, utilities, clean technology, and sustainability. Additionally, she has substantial expertise within energy and environmental investment, building teams on behalf of leading venture and private equity companies, infrastructure and asset managers, global financial institutions, and professional services groups. Claire has significant experience in senior sustainability and climate change appointments within major corporations, government, philanthropy, and non-profit organizations. Prior to joining Heidrick & Struggles, Claire led the EMEA alternative energy & clean technology practice at a global executive search firm. Previously, she was the founding managing direc…

This episode of Cleaning Up is based on a March 2022 blog post written by Michael for BloombergNEF. https://about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich-the-quest-for-resilience-what-could-possibly-go-wrong/ We would like to thank BloombergNEF for allowing us to record it.

Tom Steyer is Co-Executive Chair of Galvanize Climate Solutions, a mission-driven investment platform. Tom Steyer founded and ran Farallon Capital Management, a multi-strategy global investment business based in San Francisco, from 1986 until 2012. During that period, it grew assets from $6mm to $36bn. Over the same time, Tom was also a partner and Investment Committee member at Hellman & Friedman, a multi-billion dollar private equity firm. After retiring from Farallon, Tom dedicated himself to public service and philanthropy, with a focus on climate action. Tom is the Co-Founder of Beneficial State Bank, a triple bottom line community development financial institution founded in 2007 with over $1 billion in assets. Tom is also the Founder of NextGen America, the largest youth voter mobilization organization in American history. Most recently, Tom was a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and beginning in April 2020 served as co-chair for Governor Newsom’s Business and Jobs …

Emma Pinchbeck has been the Chief Executive of Energy UK, the trade association for the energy industry since July 2020. Before taking up this post she was Deputy CEO of RenewableUK for 4 years and was the Head of Climate Change at WWF-UK. Emma holds an MA from the University of Oxford. She is a competitive rower and in 2018 ran her first marathon, raising money for WWF.